A trademark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by businesses, individuals, organizations and other legal entities to identify and distinguish their goods and services from those from other entities. A trademark may be a name, word, phrase, logo, symbol, design, image, or a combination of these elements. Business, individuals, organizations and other legally-recognized entities may register a trademark with appropriate government or international bodies. The owner of a registered trademark may take legal action against any unauthorized use of their trademark.
Rights to a trademark are commonly, but not always limited by legal jurisdictions. For example, the US Patent & Trademark Office accepts registrations for and manages records of pending and registered US trademarks, while the UK Intellectual Property Office accepts registrations for and manages records of pending and registered UK trademarks. There exist organizations and groupings that allow for multi-jurisdictional registration of marks. One such system is the Madrid System. Another such system is the Community Trade Mark system in the European Union.
Business, individuals, organizations and other legally-recognized entities need not necessarily register their distinctive name, word, phrase, logo, symbol, design, image or other identifying elements with a government or international entity such as the USPTO or the Madrid System. This is because there exists, in certain countries such as Germany, provisions that provide limited common law rights for unregistered marks of goods and services that occupy a highly significant position in the marketplace.
Internet domain names are one area where infringement of trademarks may occur. The Internet has been a prominent feature of our lives since the latter part of the 20th century. Examples of services, resources and functions that get delivered over the Internet include the World Wide Web, with the delivery of requested information in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and other similar formats that include but is most certainly not limited to PHP, JSP, Flash, DHTML, ASP, ASPX and more. This information is often delivered over a web browser such as Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox, and is commonly accessed and identified by primary identifiers known as internet domain names. These internet domain names provide easily recognizable and memorizable names to numerically-addressed Internet resources. Examples of domain names include apple.com, whitehouse.gov, google.co.uk, and mit.edu.
Internet domain names are used as an addressing method for accessing a plethora of other services, such as accessing and transferring files via the File Transfer Protocol (FTP). Internet domain names are also, among other purposes, used to identify the senders and recipients of electronic mail (e-mail) and to manage routes for the actual transmission of these e-mail messages. It is clear that domain names play an extremely critical function in the operation of the Internet. Other uses of domain names as an addressing method include SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol), RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol), and more.
Domain names have multiple components. In the example of apple.com, ‘apple’ is the second-level domain (SLD), while ‘corn’ is the top-level domain (TLD), otherwise known as a suffix. Examples of TLDs are .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .mobi, and .name. Other TLDs include country-code variants (otherwise known as ccTLDs) such as .de, .co.uk, and .com.cn. TLDs are managed by registries (also known as registry operators). For example, ‘.com’ is managed and run by Verisign, Inc., while ‘.org’ is managed and run by the Public Interest Registry and ‘.uk’ is managed and run by Nominet UK. These registries maintain domain name registration information. In most cases, registry operators contract with designated (or accredited) domain name registrars (for example, eNom, Inc., Network Solutions, LLC, etc.) to provide domain name registration services to the public (end users) with minimal limitations. Registrars may then offer registration of domain names through reseller affiliates. End-users may register any domain name through registrars or their resellers. A domain name may generally be registered for up to a maximum period of 10 years.
End-users are generally allowed to register any domain name they want, so long as the domain name is not presently registered. In most cases, the registration process is a simple one. The end-user goes to the website of a domain name registrar (or its reseller), types in the domain name that he/she is interested in registering, and the registrar (or its reseller) performs a check for the availability of that domain name with the registry. If the domain name is available, the end-user may then register that domain name with a payment. At this time, the registrar ensures that the domain name is added to the registry. When the registration process is complete, the end-user who is now the owner of a domain name is known as a ‘registrant’.
The registrant (domain name owner) may elect to create subdomains (third-level domains, or even more). For example, Google, Inc., a search engine provider with a primary domain name of google.com, may elect to create a subdomain name ‘news’, resulting in a public-facing address ‘news.google.com’. Subdomains allow for an extremely large number of potential addresses to be created on the internet.
New TLDs are constantly being introduced (mostly global TLDs, or gTLDs), formerly dormant/unused ccTLDs are being reintroduced or relaunched (an example being .co), and new countries result in the creation of completely new ccTLDs. For example, 7 new TLDs were introduced in 2001 and 2002. These were .biz, .info, .name, .pro, .aero, .coop, and .museum. In 2003, six more new TLDs (.asia, .cat, .jobs, .mobi, .tel and .travel) were introduced. These new TLDs result in more opportunities for unique SLDs to be registered (for example, telephone.com may not be available, but telephone.mobi may be available for registration). More gTLDs are being introduced in coming years as ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) loosens limitations and allows for applications from entities who want to run their own gTLD.
Additionally, new name character sets (aside from the former ASCII limitations) have been introduced, allowing for the registration of Internationalized Domain Names in native characters from languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Russian and more.
Another area where end-users on the Internet may register names of their own is on services (social networking sites, blog sites, instant messaging, and more) such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Blogspot, Linkedin, and AOL Instant Messenger. Many of these privately run services provide users with opportunities to secure a username that becomes part of a public-facing web address. For example, Mark Zuckerberg, who is an instance of a Facebook (social network site) user, may register ‘facebook.com/zuck’, where the ‘zuck’ component of the web address was selected by the end user. In another case, Nouriel Roubini, who is an instance of a Blogspot (weblog/web journal service) user, may register ‘nourielroubini.blogspot.com’, where the ‘nourielroubini’ component of the web address was selected by the end user. In yet another example, Starbucks Corporation, which is a corporation that has a Twitter (service for high-speed status update transmission and sharing) profile/presence, may register http://twitter.com/starbucks, where the ‘starbucks’ component of the web address was selected by the end user. The list of examples mentioned in this paragraph is by no means exhaustive. There are many more examples of public-facing usernames hosted by privately-run services. In a final example for this section, Justin Bieber, who is an instance of an AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) user, may register ‘justinbieber’ as his AIM screen name.
In summary, there is a multitude of opportunities on the Internet where an individual or entity may create a new web address (e.g., domain names, subdomains, networking sites, and blog services), or a unique identifier (e.g., instant messaging services) associated with the use of web-based services. The number of such opportunities is expanding as new TLDs are launched and as dormant TLDs get revived or relaunched. This number of opportunities is also increased by the ever-growing number of social networks, blog services, and more.